K

Helmling:

That is a very good point. At first pass, I would say that marriage was instated without any thought about what was best for settled societies - that it was only set up because of the individual's strong desire to regulate the behavior of the mate. But this is something I'll have to look at further.

Longbow

Why exactly do you even care what societies have eccentrically declared to be moral or not moral? Unless you are a cultural anthropologist, for instance, you wuold nto care to go into gross detail about the particular metaphysical claims of one culture's religion or another. Would you for instance, be inclined to read the entire collection of Vedic religious books? And then move on to all that relates to Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc.? And yet many people that would never do that but claim that morality is just like that still go into far greater detail examining the particular moral beliefs of various cultures.

The reason is because they clearly think that these views they are examining in detail has a lot fo bearing on moral dilemmas that they face. When you make this sort of a connection, that is precisely when you are trying to "have your cake and eat it too". Observing how people come to make moral statements and what moral statements people have made in different contexts is really just trivia unless you are looking it up with an eye to something else (like settling a dispute or solving a moral dilemma). One's interest in such trivia belies their dismissal of it as subjective.

K

Longbow:

Actually, I think you're reading WAY too much into my interest. I have no moral dilemma I'm struggling with. I am simply interested in what makes conscious organisms tick. Social behavior is one of those complex aspects that I find particularly fascinating.

If you believe that showing interest in something is implicitly nodding to its validity, would you assert that those who study Norse myths actually put stock in the truth of those myths? How do you feel about the researchers who have suggested that tuberculosis and natural decomposition can explain most of the aspects of the belief in vampires? Would you say their interest indicates that they really do believe in vampires?

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: K ]</p>

Longbow

Yes, I understand. Okay, "read my lips" all human behavior is an evolutionary trait. I agree. That does not show anything about morality.

Take a behavior like telling the truth. "Why do people tell the truth? The people that told the truth all the time found it to their advantage to hang around and work with people that did the same. The people that lied all the time tried to pass themselves off as truth tellers and live with the truth tellers. The groups of people that had high concentrations of truth tellers faired better than the ones with liars. And now there is a strong evolutionarily selected for genetic disposition toward telling the truth."

This might be something you would say. It is something I would say. However, this sheds absolutely no light on whether or not telling the truth is moral when it isn't morally required, if ever, or even why it is morally required when and if it is. So, the entire discussion along those lines is completely non sequitur to someone, say, claiming that telling the truth is not a moral or morally required. Perhaps there is something that is not non sequitur that leads to just such a subsequent discussion, but if you just start having that discussion without covering the middle ground (that I really cannot imagine what it would be), then you might as well not say anything at all.

You may be a moral objectivist, but you are not a conceptualist (apparently). I am not saying that morality is some "realm" of special objects. As far as I am concerned "alternate realities" like this are just the same old physical reality. So, things like a spirit world or an alternate dimension where morals "exist", say, are all just the same old physical reality that is apprehensible by the standard approaches that physicists, chemists, biologists, etc. (the physical sciences) take. And, the fact that physicists aren't out there looking for the moral particle or something along those lines really should show to most people's satisfaction and certainly to mine that morality is not something like that. (In fact, if there was a physicist doing something like that, I would brand them a crack pot similar to if they were tryign to find "an equation for love" or something really corny and hoaky like that.)

What I do think, though, is the epistemological claim that knowledge consists only of examining the physical world (or any world, for that matter) is false. There is a great deal of a priori knowledge. And, I am not talking about vacuous logical extrapolations from definitions. At least, I am saying that such extrapolations if they are extrapolations are not all vacuous. (Probably this sort of a position should just be classified as saying that they aren't merely extrapolations.)

In any event, it is not an alternate universe of morals that I am talking about. I am making an epistemological distinction and I am specifically opposed to it being construed as a metaphysical one. So, you cannot just casually go between the two, at least not with my views. If you have arrived at the view that I must be saying that an alternate physical reality exists, then you have definitely made an error somewhere.

Well, for starters, that is not the Categorical Imperative. The Categorical Imperative is not "Act only in such a way that you would wish or desire everyone else too." I know he has "will that" in there and it may really sound like he is saying something like that. But, it is unequivocally clear that he is not. The "will" that he is referring to is a very special kind of thing that he labored long and hard to elaborate on extensively.

In the particular examples that you are bringing up, say like willing that everyone give people named Longbow $100, it is not universalizable but merely universal. It is a rule that everyone must follow, and that can be formulated as a universal law. In fact, any maxim of action can be stated as a merely universal law. The question of universalizability is whether or not it is in a particular way consistent when formulated this way. Specifically such a universal law would treat me preferentially and so though universal is not universalizable. And yes, even a law that is unversal and that treats almost everyone equally except for maybe the one person that made it, say, is still not universalizable. (Such as in the case that is often retorted that a suicidal man could will that everyone kill themselves, and such a thing would be universalizable.)

Then you are clearly misreading it. Kant is nothing if not deontological. Are you saying that there really is no such thing as deontological moral philosophy?

No he doesn't. He thinks that retribution is the key to justice. What you might be finding is that he doesn't think that vigilantiism is moral. But, retribution isn't a "wrong", in any case.

Again, if you've drawn this conclusion, you have clearly made a mistake. You are equating statements about what constitutes knowledge with statements about what exists in the physical world. These are two distinct subjects.

Nope. Did you get that out of the preface to teh Critque of Pure Reason? That is usually where something like that or that Kant rejects logic or other such things are defended on discussion boards. And, it is usually done by Objectivists. I'm sorry, but this is just a ridiculous mischaracterization of anything that he actually believed.

If this is what Kant really thought, you would see him bringing up God all over the place in the Critique of Pure Reason. You would see him referring to the bible all the time or some other source of God's word. You would see him bringing up God in everything he does. He paractically never does. The only time he brings up God in any substantial way is in books like Religion Within the Bounds of Mere Reason or the Critique of Practical Reason (and only as a conclusion not as a basis for arguing).

No.

Again, you aren't really trying to figure out what his position is. You are just trying to fit him into your already determined views. A "good will" is not even an "end". The Categorical Imperative is what defines a "good will". You are acting as if he means the same thing that is informally and casually stated in such phrases as "good will to men", for instance. He clearly doesn't. A "good will" is not what his moral philosophy is predicated on. It is little more than baggage that he uses to introduce his ideas with.

Longbow

Well that is the question that defines moral philosophy. If you seek to answer this question, then you are necessarily engaging in moral philosophy. And I cannot emphasize that it is philosophy that you are engaging in more. It is not science and any effort to "scientize" it by making it a discussion of evolutionary psychology or cultural anthropology will always fail.

Longbow

*sigh* That's ridiculous. And the reason you have't "founding a compelling argument" that morality is objective ios because you refuse to.

But, what the hell, I've done it several tiems now, let's take this really slowly and see where the burden of proof ends up. "X is wrong," is a sentence containing moral content, is it not? But, "X is wrong," is a delcarative sentence. Supposing you have no idea what this sentence means, then, you must assume that it is attempting to communicate an assertion. If you say otherwise, then it is you that must have some idea of what this statement does or does not mean.

Now it is your turn...

It is blatantly obvious that I do not think that. What I clearly think is that moral philosophy is not just about simply behavior. I am certainly not divorcing morality from behavior. I am just not limiting the discussion to only behavior in general.

1) That's not the topic of this thread.

2) That clearly is not what my issue is since I think that we are all deterministically evolved animals. (I agreed a long, long time ago that all our behavioral traits were the product of evolution.)

3) The issue is what is the basis for morality, not how do particular people fallaciously or otherwise end up drawing conclusions about it.

Longbow

This is quite common. Math is not a "fact". It is just an idea. Well, I say this, but I am inclined to agree that math is a fact and that relationships of ideas can consitute "facts". But it is clear that you mean by "fact", something like a physical fact. What math is is a formal and precise subject. And the deriovations contained in it are considered "true".

Your contention is that moral statements are not this way. Fine. That is your contention. I am specifically telling you that they are. What are you trying to say "Nuh uh?" I think that the direction you are heading in is perhaps that moral philosophy is not a precise, formal subject like math. And then you want to conclude that therefore the statements contained therein must not be "true" or "false" like the statements in math.

I don't know, I cannto make your argument for you, but you have to come up with a reason why morality is subjective. You cannot say that morality isn't like math because it is subjective and math is objective. So, therefore morality is subjective.

This is what the whole discussion is about. I say they are "static, unchanging and eternal", you say they aren't. It isn't an obvious truth. It isn't even true. If anything it is obviously false. Look, moral sentences such as "X is wrong," are

1) Meaningful
2) Declarative
3) Intended to be assertions

You are the one that definitely has the burden of showing that they are not.

Yes. (Perhaps I should add "you idiot!") The possibility of having those ideas is all that is required for them to exist as ideas. Obviously it is NOT and I cannto state this more explicitly and clearly and emphaticalyl than I already have: IT IS NOT MY CONTENTION THAT MORALS ARE PHYSICAL OBJECTS.

IN FACT, that is a lot more like YOUR contention than mine. I think that morals are merely ideas. And for morality to "exist" just means that the ideas of morals are possible. Or in other words, morality doesn't really "exist". Neither does math, for instance, nor all of philosophy. In fact, pretty much most of science or any kind of knowledge doesn't "exist" as some sort of physical object. They are all ideas. And the "existence" of an idea just means that it is possible to have the idea.

Give me a break.

Then you don't know what "morals" are and what you claim are facts are ansurdly false. They aren't facts -- they are your personal attitudes. All you are really saying in this post is something like "Math is cool and morality sucks." Well I agree with the first part but not the latter. If you think that moral philosophy is not objective then you are just being uneducatable. It's the "Idiot's Veto" (not to be construed as meaning that you are an idiot): "Just because I can dispute a proposition, then that makes it false or renders the subject subjective."

If that were true, then the mere existence of Creationists would render biology subjective or evolution false.

K

Longbow:

Was that your proof that morals are objective, or did I miss something? I don't see at all how that proves objective morality. If you could enumerate your premises and your chain of reasoning, it might help me to understand the proof.

Longbow

No. They might agree just as I have that behavior has evolved. Not very many actually "take an evolutionary approach to ethics" -- not even atheists. The Randians like George Smith, Leneord Peikoff, and David Kelly certainly don't. Robert Nozick was an atheist, I believe, but was a Lockean. I am not sure right off the top of my head which of the ones that did not adhere to the sort of view you are proposing were also actually atheists.

Perhaps you could list all the main moral philosophers, identify the atheists and show that they believe what you seem to take for granted -- that morality is subjective and that morals are really nothing more than evolved traits like hair color.

Longbow

1) You are the one with the burden of proof.

2) But I have started the ball rolling for you, pointing out the obvious -- that moral statements are declarative sentences. As such, they contain propositions that are either true or false.

3) This most certainly is sufficient to show that morality is objective since all this means is that a statement like "X is wrong" is "true" or "false".

4) If you don't think so, then you'll have to explain exactly what you mean.